1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technology for transferring virtual volumes established on real volumes.
2. Description of the Related Art
Virtual volume managing programs are known that can form virtual volumes on real volumes such as a disk device or a Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) device and provide the virtual volumes to higher-order applications.
For example, in Fujitsu Limited, “PRIMECLUSTER GDS4.X”, [online], [searched on Nov. 19, 2006], Internet [URL: http://primeserver.fujitsu.com/primepower/products/soft/opt/pcl_gds—4x/>, a virtual volume managing program that can form virtual volumes on a plurality of disk devices connected to a server apparatus and perform mirroring and striping is disclosed. On the other hand, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H5-173873 discloses a technology for performing management of virtual volumes in units of job applications.
The higher-order applications can write data on and read out data from the virtual volumes by using such virtual volume managing programs without being aware of real volume configurations. It is also possible to improve fault tolerance against disk device failures by employing the technique of mirroring, and distribute the load of the access to the disk devices by employing the technique of striping.
However, in the conventional technique, in transferring virtual volumes established on a server apparatus to other server apparatuses, it is the job of a server administrator or the like to establish virtual volumes at a transfer destination after recognizing the differences in the configurations of the real volumes. In other words, the transfer of the virtual volumes is performed manually, which makes the process inefficiency.
One solution is to read-out configuration information about virtual volumes at a transfer source and reflect the configuration information on a transfer destination. However, because the configuration information includes information about a correspondence relation between virtual volumes and real volumes, it is impossible to directly reflect the configuration information on an environment in which a real volume configuration is different.